Cine Machine Gun

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11/03/2009

Showgirls (1995)

Vile vs. Bile. Paul Verhoeven directed this bag of sleaze, but like a lot of his movies, there is this mood of depression, showing life at the bottom, where it can’t get any worse. If you've seen Total Recall, RoboCop and Starship Troopers you'll notice this running theme of his. That makes good cinema sometimes. But this time made a bad excuse of a social parody.Wow! Paul is reeeeally tough if you ask me. Especially, when it comes to robocops and, recently, robosluts. Mean machines that operate on money and produce pleasure and pain. I’ve been thinking of this since Basic Instinct, Sliver and the works, but this movie really got the best of Paul – away.Let’s see: hard-boiled brothel veterans, literally tough-ass chicks, a red-neck vampire lesbian dominatrix, a fat-mouth-fat-chance lady, dirty cash, Flashdancing stars and sex, not on the beach but certainly on the bitch. Hookers take it all-everyone else shall fall. The movie follows the destiny of a walking bag of “fuckin’ hostile” trash named Nomi Malone (played by Elizabeth Berkley whose acting comes in two flavours: blank and blink) who has killer looks and the brain of an appliance bulb. She's a leather-clad, bad-chick from the wrong side of the tracks who hitches to Vegas to become a dancer. How are we to be sure that she's bad? She wears leather, carries a switchblade and cakes on enough make-up to make the Joker cry. Perhaps, she figures, all that badness makes her a human shield against that cold and unfeeling landscape of bitter failure and resentment known as Las Vegas. When she gets there she finds that Vegas is, well, a cold and unfeeling landscape of bitter failure and resentment. Well, everyone knows that life is a bitch, but Paul throws a looot worse in our face. Over-swearing, over-bitching, and overacting. And you know something? If it was meant to hurt that much, it would have been skip the “happy” ending. So, was it shock tactics or just sex tactics?? Usually, when sex scenes from movies come back to us, they come with a hard on. This is not so like the Showgirls. When I think of the "highlights" of this movie, I just want to puke at all things feminine, most of the times after extreme laughter. Indeed, when I saw Elizabeth Berkley flailing like an electrocuted dummy plugged by a dick, I was caught between sneering and abdominal disturbance. Cash in on Sharon’s fans and the past, genius, but I won’t invest my time and my admiration to you in this shiny-close-to-nothing.Pass by for once the middle man called Verhoeven guys, and go download directly, full time soft porn.